The field of the invention relates generally to providing a test environment for certain structural components, materials, and coatings, and more specifically to systems and methods for providing a severe acoustic, thermal, and airflow test environment.
Development and certification of advanced structural components, materials and coatings, which must survive extreme acoustic, thermal and airflow environments is difficult and expensive due to lack of adequate and affordable extreme environment testing facilities and methods.
Specifically, there are no known existing laboratory-scale solutions, which combine the three environments of acoustic levels, temperature, and airflow at extreme levels. Stand-alone laboratory acoustic testing machines are known, as are stand-alone thermal testing machines. In addition there are known solutions for combined acoustic and thermal testing. However, and as stated above, there are no known laboratory test capabilities which combine control of all three environments, acoustic, temperature, and airflow simultaneously.
The exiting solutions involve using large-scale wind tunnels capable of supersonic speeds, and the operation of actual air or space vehicles. As a specific example, NASA performed tests on the space shuttle thermal protection system tiles by attaching them to the outside structure of an F-15 jet and conducting test flights at supersonic speeds in order to expose the tiles to the right combination of extreme acoustic levels, extreme thermal conditions, and extreme airflow environments.
As described above, existing laboratory-scale solutions are only partial and incomplete since they do not include all three environments in combination. The problem with test solutions that incorporate either a supersonic wind tunnel and/or air/space vehicles is primarily complexity and cost. Supersonic wind tunnels, for example, are very expensive to operate; on the order of $15,000 per hour plus setup costs. NASA space shuttle tile tests on the F-15 jet are estimated to cost on the order of $25,000 to $50,000 per flight.
Evaluations of new structural, material and/or coating concepts, which need to survive hundreds of hours in the severe environments, is generally cost prohibitive using either wind tunnel or air/space vehicle test options. A further disadvantage of either of these options is operational and flight safety risk assessments. Specifically, a significant risk analysis is required to install any new components and/or materials in either a supersonic wind tunnel or on an air/space vehicle.